stays and whatever else fine ladies wear these days to
set themselves off. All gray and weathered and sort of
strewn along the shore as if she’d been cobbled together
from drift timbers and logs cast up by the Fundy
tides. Oh, she’s a far cry all right from those raw and
bustling Yankee towns down south where the hammering
and sawing never ends.

Aye, it’s most as if someone framed the village like a
painting and hung it up on a wall to dry. Reminds me of
them seascapes Virginia used to clutter up Aquidneck’s
bulkheads with. Mind you, I don’t see nearly so many
masts foresting the Narrows as there used to be. Not so
many brigs and topsail schooners bellying up to the
docks either, but say now, that could just be old age
fogging up my boyhood memories. You know how it is,
Spray, when you coast back into some snug little roadstead where you ain’t dropped anchor since the native oak in your hull was still sappy green. Everything and everyone that comes along looks and feels like a pair of cotton long johns that’s all shrunk up from hanging on the clothesline.

Now don’t go getting me wrong, old girl. I no more
want this little backwater to ever go Yankee than I’d
think of trading you up for one of the ships I used to
skipper. Heck, it gives a seafaring man kind of a warm
feeling to come back home every few years and find
nothing’s changed, like the place got stuck in time. Oh I
know what you’re thinking, that it ill behooves an old
salt like me to wind up blubbering into my beard like
this.

For I’m damned if I can remember ever feeling anything
but miserable while living here as a lad. All right,
maybe that’s stretching the truth just a bit. I admit I’ve
a few good memories tucked away, like that time I
sneaked off with my mates in a dory on a sailing lark
around the island, even if I did pay for it later with a
thrashing. And how could I ever forget my dear old